If you’ve been on a road trip before, you probably know driving cross country lends itself well to a mixed bag of odd circumstances and strange characters along the way. But what about a road trip hidden-camera movie starring Eric André, Lil Rel Howery and Tiffany Haddish? Well, a Bad Trip happens. Behind the scenes, one of the comedians’ pranks ended with a knife in the middle of it all.
Not unlike Borat Subsequent Moviefilm or 2013’s Bad Grandpa, the Eric André Show host plays Chris, who is best friends with Get Out star Lil Rel’s Bud, and the movie follows the pair as they get caught up in some cross-country antics. The storyline sets up the real pranks Eric André and Lil Rel pull on people throughout the film, but one got especially risky. During one prank, Andre and Lil Rel walk into a barber shop to prank the business by pretending their penises are stuck together in a Chinese finger trap and it led to the owner actually pulling a knife on them. As André described it:
Part of my brain was like, 'Wow, I could die right now.' Another part of my brain goes, 'This is going to be great footage’. I felt the movie needed a couple of death-defying scenes to give it real stakes. To make it feel raw and intense.
Yeah… they went there. While the movie was filming, with a number of hidden cameras watching the exchange, the Atlanta barber grabbed a nearby knife and chased them with it as they fled. Eric André told USA Today that he feared for his life one moment, and then realized it would only help the movie’s intensity. But, Lil Rel was so spooked by the interaction that he nearly quit the film because of it. In Howery’s words to LA Times:
I literally left and said, ‘I’m done. I’m not doing this movie’. I walked straight to my hotel still in my character clothes — that’s how mad I was. It was my kids who convinced me to keep going. I told them what happened and they thought it was hilarious.
Lil Rel Howery came around and decided to continue, but he was understandably concerned. You never quite know how a random bystander is going to react to a crazy prank. Eric André, on the other hand, has been pulling pranks for years on his Adult Swim anti-talk show The Eric André Show. The series has gotten the 37-year-old arrested and he has sustained multiple injuries for TV laughs. In fact, Bad Trip was almost safer for the comedian this time around because he used stunt doubles and knee pads for the first time. Check out the red band trailer:
Bad Trip is streaming now on Netflix along with a ton of other new 2021 titles on the streaming service.
